France is banning smoking?

Smokers beware, your day is coming .. fast and hard!
According to a BBC news story, the French government
is putting the kibosh on public smoking by January of 2008.
This is significant because France is one of those die-hard
smoking countries with a c'est la vie/que sera sera/cool is
the rule attitude where smoking was once king. It's about
impossible to imagine a cool Frenchman without a leather
coat and a smoke sitting at a cafe. But not only is France
making this move, it is doing so with the support of 70
percent of its population. That's a lot of support for anything
in politics.

It's just getting to the point in our history where people and
their governments are realizing that smoking has a very high
cost in terms of public health care. Nicotine is an addictive
drug that has been widely accepted for decades. It isn't less
deadly or less insidious because cute little old people do it. Imagine
if every where you went, people were chewing on coca leaves
or smoking opium in corncob pipes. We'd be screaming, "what
about the children?!"

Objections to smoking bans are becoming more and diaphanous
and nebulous all the time. People aren't sticking to their
guns the way they once did. As the number of ex-smokers grow,
so too does the clamor to outlaw smoking in bars and restaurants.
Ex-smokers know better than anyone that cigarettes are powerfully
addictive and that the more incentive they can give addicts to quit
the better off they will be in the long run.

Now say what you will about freedom of choice and liberty and what
not, but the law has always been on the side of curbing harmful
behavior especially when it is influenced by powerful addiction. It is
precisely because a powerful addiction strips human beings of their
right to choose for themselves that it becomes acceptable for society
to use the law to curb their behavior. We don't tolerate addicts to shoot
junk, snort blow or smoke meth in public places. Should we allow people
addicted to those drugs public rights so long as they don't bother anyone
else? Of course not, though a perfectly well behaved junkie would be
better than sitting next to someone smoking in a Burger King. I am old
enough to remember that pain in the ass behavior.

Addicts always argue that their addictions are really their rights and
legal restrictions on their public behavior equals infringement. It is too
bad they never realize that the real attack on their freedom comes from
their dependency.